I decided to hike this on Friday Jan 11th, the day before it snowed. For this hike, I rented black diamond crampons from REI for $14 and an ice axe, boy did they worked well! I started at Manker Flats and worked my way up to the ski hut then up to the peak. At the ski hut is when you need crampons/microspikes. From here just followed the trail up in the snow and get to the peak in no time. I did go back down the same way I came up. Ideally, you would go down devil backbone, but in snow, I did not want to risk it. I did this hike alone, so when I ran into hikers, I realized they were going up and down manker trail. For my safety I thought, if anything (knock knock on wood) had happened, I wanted to be close to them as possible so they could help if worse happened. Also, one more note, one of the hikers told me someone had passed away doing devil backbone (https://www.pe.com/2017/03/11/man-hiking-devils-backbone-trail-atop-mount-baldy-dies/). So it was better to be safe than sorry since I was hiking this alone. In all I had a lot of fun! But be careful, there will be snow this upcoming week.